Hampster Dance
Hampton, the Hampster is an animated music project, which emerged from an internet hype.
Background
The website
1998 designed the Canadian art student Deidre La Carte a website for a competition with her sister and her best friend, who would most attract visitors. To this end, she created four different Gif animations with hamsters, which are spread over the whole side danced in rows and let to a pitched version of a sample from the Whistle Stop by Roger Miller as a wav file in country style play. The song was the theme music of the Disney animated film Robin Hood. The hamsters were her own pet modeled after a hamster named Hampton, and the page was called Hampton's Hampster House.
After initially not much was done, the message of the page spread suddenly jumped on the internet and innovative for its time website posted up to 250 000 hits per day. Having had done seven months after the start bit, the Internet users had then viewed the page in the three months: 17 million times. However La Carte had used one of the cheap GeoCities pages and failed to come in time to save the address " hampsterdance.com ", then a company had reserved and the advertising effect exploited. While the net already incurred dozens of similar pages with animated cows, lizards and others, they began to build the page " hampsterdance2.com ". Of their four rodents different variants emerged.
Musical Achievements
Back in 1999, took the Cuban Boys from England, the country melody and built it into a techno song called Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia. The song was played on BBC One and the most requested song in John Peel's show since the 70s. The single releases brought the Cuban Boys a fourth place in the British charts and sold over 200 000 plates.
Thereupon La Carte also sought professional partners. In spring 2000, a proper single was mixed with Rapeinlage from the few seconds of song sample from La Carte and The Hampsterdance song was released in Canada under the artist name Hampton the Hampster. After she had been there for the best-selling single and taken for 6 weeks # 1 on the Canadian charts, it was released worldwide. In a number of countries, they then went into the charts and was among other things number 60 in Germany, number 5 in Australia in the Dance Maxi - charts of the U.S., it reached # 4 There was a whole album and more single releases such as the Country classics Thank God I'm a Country Boy, who were in some countries also still quite successful.
In the film comedy spot from 2001 and Are We There Yet? 2005 with rapper Ice Cube the Hampsterdance was used as film music.
Other projects
The original four hamsters had already very developed. All four characters were given names ( Hampton, Hado, and Fuzzy Dixie ) and had become right cartoon characters and even movie animations. The website was changed to the originally desired address and selling various merchandise. The rights and the company that Deidre La Carte had founded, had been taken over by Abatis International and produced in collaboration with web designers Unreal and the production company Nelvana, the children's programs, they tried to market the Hampsters on. Although the page until today (2008 ) is in operation and the Forum will continue to visit, but the outcome of the projects is not known. The original website of La Carte is no longer accessible, but there are numerous on the internet copies of the original representation.
Discography
Album
- The Hampsterdance Album ( 2001)
Singles
- The Hampsterdance Song ( 2000)
- Thank God I'm a Country Boy (2001)
- Hampster Party (2001)
- Sing a Simple Song (2001)